Addiction to friction – how we still don’t have a seamless online experience

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Cast your
mind back to when you first connected to the Internet. In my household, it was
one of the most exciting days of my younger years. Being able to “surf the web”
and connect with people across the globe was a jaw-dropping experience.
However, compare that first Internet experience with how we use it today.
Despite widespread use being only roughly 20 years old, it’s incredible how
much the experience has improved over such a short space of time. It is certainly testament to technological
advances that we have been able to make these improvements, but it also struck
me that web consumption has always had, and continues to have, some form of
friction when it comes to that seamless experience. What is undisputable is
that these obstacles have always been tackled head on and, in many cases,
eliminated.

For example,
when the Internet first came to my house, the biggest challenge was connection.
We all remember having to use the landline if you wanted to use the Internet (and
in my case being shouted at by my parents to get off the phone) and the infamous
screeching dial-up tone through the modem. However, the advent of broadband
technologies made this a thing of the past.

The next real
obstacle was speed. Waiting for a website to load or an image to download one
pixelated line at a time was incredibly frustrating. Superfast fibre optic
broadband came along and nipped that problem in the bud.

Then there
was even the issue of “internet cold turkey” – people wanted access to content
all the time. Smartphones, tablets, 3G and 4G came to the aid of those that were
“afflicted". Even Wi-Fi on the Tube is satisfying the cravings of the most
hardened of internet addicts.

What all these
examples show is that, despite solutions to major issues, there has always
seemed to be another hurdle to overcome. And now is no different.

The main
issue that has now emerged from being able to be connected anywhere, anytime is
the amount of data that is now produced. It’s estimated that 90 percent of all
online data has been produced in the last two years[1]. The App Economy has
undoubtedly played a major part in this, as have the likes of Facebook, Twitter
and Instagram. Such a wealth of data, often personal, has increasingly
sophisticated hackers rubbing their hands together with glee.

Added to this is that recent research revealed that the average UK Internet user has 83 online
accounts[2], and this is where
friction rears its ugly head again. Users either have the same password (or slight
variations) for all accounts, which are a hacker’s dream, as we have seen from
various high-profile attacks, such as Heartbleed or Anthem. Or they have different
alphanumeric passwords for each account. This is naturally highly secure and
sensible. The problem with this though is that the human brain simply cannot
process this amount of information. Indeed Miller’s Law[3] states that the average number
of numbers a human can hold in their memory at any one time is only seven.
Similarly the number of objects to remember, such as a password, is only seven
too. In short, it’s impossible to remember a different complex password for
every account we have.

As a result,
the friction we now have is that you are either vulnerable to attacks on your
personal information (by dint of using the same password) or you have to spend
time finding the right alphanumeric password for the right account. Either way,
it’s certainly not creating the seamless experience we crave. The good news is
that steps are being taken to address this through intuitive password managers,
military-grade encryption and simple-to-use personal security. Soon, security
will no longer need to be sacrificed for convenience.

So are we now
at the stage where we have a completely seamless Internet experience? I don’t
think so. However, if you were to ask me if we this experience is on the
horizon, I would say yes. The sooner people realise they can continue to
produce data, anytime, anywhere, in a secure fashion, the sooner we will
finally get rid of the friction that has remained prevalent for so long.